Value: Your Portfolio's Secret Ingredient

Andrew Fisher

Tuesday, 27 May 2008 | 1:50 PM ETCNBC.com

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Ridgeworth Capital Management's Don Wordell says the thing your portfolio needs the most right now is value, and he has a couple of appropriate names for you. (He also offered Web-exclusive picks -- only for CNBC.com readers.)

His four-star Ridgeworth Mid-Cap Value Equity Fund is up an average of 15.2 percent per year over the last five years.

Recommendations:

Here's a surprise: His top stock pick is an airline. Not so surprisingly, it's Southwest Airlines.

"Energy is not what's going to drive Southwest Airlines," he told CNBC. "They have the best balance sheet in the business right now -- $3 billion in cash -- and they're going to be the clear beneficiary from the Delta-Northwest merger and the capacity that's coming out of the airline space right now."

Also on his list: A financial stock! It's National City.

"Nat City's valuation is very compelling, trading at a discount to tangible book value," he explained. "The market is giving them absolutely no credit for $60 billion in deposits; they have gone through the capital-raising that they needed to go through, and our estimate is that in the next two years, they're actually going to have an excess-capital position."